Police: 73-year-old woman sexually assaulted in Central Park

[alp227]

A 73-year-old woman was sexually assaulted Wednesday in New York's Central Park in the middle of the day, police said.

The victim was bird watching in the vicinity of 74th Street and Central Park West, also known as Strawberry Fields, just before noon when her alleged attacker approached her. The woman told police they exchanged words and he sexually assaulted her.

He also stole some items, authorities said. The woman was taken to an area hospital after passerby Eric Ozawa found her lying in the bushes.

"I saw her face was badly beaten," Ozawa told CNN affiliate WABC. "She was swollen, her right eye was black, her forehead was swollen ... She told me that she had been raped."

full: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/12/us/new-york/index.html

Yep, the Strawberry Fields immortalized in that Beatles song.

NY Times online has more detail:

The woman, a bird-watcher who goes to the park every day, had indeed encountered the man before. About a week and a half ago, she had seen him masturbating in the Ramble area and taken a photograph of him. The man demanded that the woman delete the photo at the time, and when she refused, he tried unsuccessfully to take her camera, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said.

Around 11:50 a.m., the woman was birding along a wooded path near West 74th Street and Strawberry Fields when the man, whom she described as white, stocky and clean shaven, with a Russian or Ukrainian accent and in his 40s or 50s, appeared again.

[Heather MC]

1. This is sick

I hope they catch the asshole who did this.